GradientsIsAFastAndFunTreatForPhotographs

Gradients (Free) by Whiteline is a fast and simple app for gradients and filters for your iPhone and iPad photographs. If you just want a fun and quick fix for your photos, then this app is necessary.

If you have an iPhone, you probably love taking photos with it. I mean, it’s just so convenient, isn’t it? No wonder it’s the most-used camera these days. But the real fun comes with editing on-the-go, thanks to all of the photography apps out there. And if you are a fan of gradients and the artsy-looking filter, then Gradients needs to be in your iPhoneography toolbox.

The first thing I noticed when launching Gradients is the speed. I’m not kidding — this app is fast. There’s no splash screen or loading screen; when the app is launched, it’s ready to go! Kind of hard to find a photography app that does that nowadays.

Gradients allows users to import photos from their device photo library, or you can capture new images from the camera right from within Gradients. When the image is selected, it will be imported into the editing screen in the app. You can reveal or hide the effects menu at any time by tapping anywhere on the screen (aside from the menu). If you need a helpful overlay, tap on the “i” button in the top right corner.

Gradients has a variety of effects that are split into three categories: Gradients, Photo, and Artistic. The Gradients is probably the most unique part of the app, especially considering that it’s named after it as well. If you’re a fan of gradients, then you will love having 17 different gradient options to choose from! You can have basic gradients, like teal-blue and red-green, to more distinctive ones like orange-teal, multicolors, and various colored fogs.

The Photo category features filters that you’ve probably seen before in other apps, since it includes effects like Polaroid, Lomo, Cross Process, and more. While these are found everywhere, it’s nice to have them in one app with a ton of unique gradients. And if you’re feeling particularly artsy, the Artistic category will have a good variety of options to choose from as well, including Golden Hour, Blacklight, Deep Red, and more. Even though the app is specifically amazing for gradients, the photo and artistic filters aren’t too shabby either.

While it’s nice to have preset options available to you, it’s even better if you can customize them to your own preferences. Fortunately, Gradients allows you to do just that. No matter which effect you have applied, they can all be adjusted. Just apply the one you want on the photo, and then tap on the “Edit” button. This brings up a new view, where you can adjust the filter’s hue, saturation, value, and alpha settings, along with each individual part that composes the effect itself. There is enough control for any professional photographer, but it’s also easy enough for the newbie to understand at the same time.

This is useful if you like a particular effect, but don’t like the colors that it originally comes in. So mix it up with your own favorite colors and contrast! This alone makes the app worth checking out.

In addition to giving users full control over the settings of each filter, you can also adjust the opacity (essentially the strength) of the gradient or filter as well. Tapping on the Opacity options brings up a slider at the top of the screen, and just drag it to the preference you want.

When you’re done tweaking your photo, you can save it to your Camera Roll, or share by email, Twitter, or Facebook. There is no option in the app to choose what size you want to save or share as, but through my test I found out that it saves in the original size.

Gradients is definitely a wonderful little photography app for free, and I am definitely keeping it in my arsenal. I think it would be nice to have some basic photo editing features included, that way I don’t have to use multiple apps for perfecting the canvas, so to speak. Maybe that can be added in the future as an in-app purchase to get (this is already a great app for free). I would also like to see different saving options, in case some people do not want the full size to share (data restrictions). Currently, Gradients can only apply one effect at a time — it would be even better if you could apply multiple effects at once, saving time.